


Tikkun Olam

by Daughter_of_Stories



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Canon Jewish Characters, Gen, Jewish Comics Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-07-11 16:52:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7061206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daughter_of_Stories/pseuds/Daughter_of_Stories
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How do you respond to life in a broken world?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tikkun Olam

“ _It is not your obligation to complete the work, but you are not free to abandon it”- Pikei Avot/Ethics of the Fathers 2:21_

 

Max Eisenhardt learned that the world was broken on the day his father was thrown into the street by the man whose life he had saved. Jakob Eisenhardt was a war hero, but that did not save him from the Nuremberg laws, or the Warsaw Ghetto, or the camp at Treblinka. Max huddled in a mass grave under the bodies of his family and knew that the world was broken beyond repair. He vowed to make his people strong enough to survive the cracks.

Benjamin Grimm learned that the world was broken on the day a freak accident transformed him and his friends into something other than human. Johnny,  Sue, and Reed became more than what they had been, gaining great powers and losing nothing. Ben lost himself, turning into a creature of stone instead of flesh. But stone is strong enough to hold together a cracked world, and stone is strong enough to protect the weak when the world began to crumble. Ben was a monster, but he fit perfectly into a broken world.

Dr. Walter Langkowski learned the world was broken on the day he broke himself. A misguided experiment transformed him into a great beast ruled purely by instinct. He learned, with the help of his friends, to control his new form and to use it to defend his country. Walter was a broken man in a broken world, but that did not mean he could not be a force for good.

Kathrine Pryde learned that the world was broken on the day the boy she adored told her an anti-Semitic joke and thought she would laugh. It was barely the beginning of her awakening to hatred; in the coming years she would be forced to fight, over and over again, for her right to live. She would hear herself called monster, less than human. She would watch the deaths of her family and friends. She would watch those she loved and trusted break under the strain of a broken world. But she would not break. Kitty stood tall, and built a school to teach children how to survive in a broken world.

Gertrude Yorkes learned that the world was broken on the day that she learned her parents were monsters. They and several other couples formed the Pride and created a plan to destroy the world. But the children of the Pride stopped their parents and became protectors of the weak. Gert knew the world was broken, and she knew it was the role of the children to prevent it from breaking further.

**Author's Note:**

> There's an idea in Judaism that G-d created the world incomplete and humanity's job is to finish the work of creation. This was built on that idea; I hope it makes sense.


End file.
